Discourse markers and modal particles are fuzzy linguistic categories that are difficult to describe. The contributions in this volume go beyond this statement. They discuss the intersection between modal particles and discourse markers and examine whether or not it is possible to draw a line between these two types of linguistic expressions. On the basis of new synchronic and diachronic data, from speech and writing, from European and Asian languages or cross-linguistically, the authors answer the question whether discourse markers and modal particles are distinct categories, whether they...

As of Volume 9 (1994/95) John Benjamins Publishing Company is the official publisher of the Belgian Journal of Linguistics, the annual publication of the Linguistic Society of Belgium. Each volume is topical and includes selected papers from the international meetings organised by the LSB.
This volume on subjectification and modalization sheds new light on two kinds of shifts: (i) the shift from originally lexical reading toward propositional or procedural ones and (ii) the shift from direct speech to various forms of indirect speech. The papers of this volume not only corroborate many...

Coming to grips with the semantics-pragmatics interface of evidentiality is an important step forward towards a comprehensive lexicography of this functional category. It not only allows for differentiating between encoded evidential meanings and contextually inferred pragmatic meanings, but also improves the empirical basis for cross-linguistic comparability. A clear view of the conventional meaning of evidential markers, and its relation to inferred pragmatic meaning, gives new insights in degrees of conventionalization across languages. In this volume, the researcher interested in...